New 'Sunken UFO' Images Unconvincing, Experts Say

Below:

Next story in Science

Last summer, a team of ocean explorers from Sweden spotted what
appeared to be a 60-meter-wide, disc-shape object at the bottom
of the Baltic Sea, situated at the end of a strip of smooth
seafloor. When the team's sonar image of the object surfaced on
the Web, UFO believers immediately took it for a sunken flying
saucer that crashed into the ocean long ago, tearing across the
seabed before coming to a stop.

The Swedish divers, who call themselves the "Ocean X Team,"
revisited the site earlier this year and claimed to find a second
disc-shape object near the first. Life's Little Mysteries
addressed both claims. But now, the team is back making
headlines with new close-up images of their underwater find,
taken during a recent exploratory dive. The divers say they've
discovered an entrance in the top of the UFO-like object, as well
as charred and soot-covered rocks scattered across it — remnants,
perhaps, of its crash and burn through the
atmosphere? [ Gallery:
Images of 'Sunken UFO' ]

"Normally, stones don't burn," Stefan Hogeborn, one of the divers
at Ocean X Team, said in a press release. Peter Lindberg, the
team's founder, added, "[Since] no volcanic activity has ever
been reported in the Baltic Sea, the find becomes even stranger.
As laymen, we can only speculate how this is made by nature, but
this is the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a
professional diver."

However, experts in remote imaging and geology say Lindberg and
his team have let their imaginations run wild — or they're
purposely misleading "wealthy tourists" who they told the press
they hope to take on submarine tours of the site.

First, the experts have observed no signs of charring in the
explorers' newly released photo of an underwater rock pile. "The
description of 'charred rocks' is completely unwarranted," said
Dan Fornari, a marine geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. And, even if the rocks are dark, that is to be
expected, said Katherine Croff Bell, chief scientist at the
Nautilus Exploration Program. "In contrast to rocks found on
land, practically all rocks that have been underwater for a long
time are black, so their color doesn't necessarily indicate
volcanic or burned origin," she told Life's Little
Mysteries.

Furthermore, despite the divers' claim that the UFO-like object
"had an egg-shaped hole leading into it from the top, as an
opening," a photo of this notable feature is conspicuously absent
from their press release. The divers also do not disclose whether
the object, upon close inspection, appeared to be rocky or
metallic — surely, an important clue to its identity. [ 7
Huge Misconceptions about Aliens ]

And why haven't they released any new images of the entire
seafloor feature? The only image in existence is the
eyebrow-raising one the team took last summer using sonar
scanning. "The sonar image has numerous artifacts in it that make
it difficult to interpret, and I would not place too much
confidence in any interpretation until a better processing is
done and the details of the type of sonar and particulars are
provided," said Fornari, an expert on sonar scanning of marine
geologic features. "I'm saying the data are lacking in
resolution, detail, and quantification."

The image does have some details added to it by the Ocean X Team.
They outlined the seafloor feature — whatever it is —
exaggerating its resemblance to the Millennium Falcon spaceship
from "Star Wars," and drew borders on the "track" leading up to
it. This speaks volumes, said Jonathon Hill, a research
technician at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State
University, who analyzes images of Mars surface features taken
during NASA's Mars missions.

The alleged "track" of cleared material doesn't appear to really
be there either, he said; the "track" lacks a bottom edge, while
the sharp top edge that appears in the image isn't actually
present on the seafloor: "Notice how the entire top of the image
is much darker than the rest of the image, almost like there's a
dark strip along the top? That's a type of image artifact we call
an edge effect, and it's something we regularly see in a lot of
remote sensing imagery. I'm certain that if they collected
another sonar image centered on the 'track,' they would see
gentle blending [of the seafloor] and it suddenly wouldn't look
like a track at all."